Blog  Philosophy  Matthew Crawford: “We’re not as free and independent as we thought.”

Matthew Crawford: “We’re not as free and independent as we thought.”

December 30, 2012|Reading Time: 2 minutes

“We have a generation of students that can answer
questions on standardized tests, know factoids,
but they can't do anything.”
— Jim Aschwanden

***

Despite the metrification of the modern workplace, we still lack for objective standards that lack ambiguity in terms of credit and blame. The complexity of work generally means that one person doesn't work alone anymore. They are part of a team. This rise of teamwork makes it difficult to trace individual responsibility.

Managers themselves inhabit a bewildering psychic landscape, and are made anxious by the vague imperatives they must answer to. The college student interviews for a job as a knowledge worker, and finds that the corporate recruiter never asks him about his grades and doesn't care what he majored in. He senses that what is demanded of him is not knowledge but rather that he project a certain kind of personality, an affable complaisance. Is all his hard work in school somehow just for show—his ticket to a Potemkin meritocracy? There seems to be a mismatch between form and content, and a growing sense that the official story we've been telling ourselves about work is somehow false.

There is more:

A washing machine, for example, surely exists to serve our needs, but in contending with one that is broken, you have to ask what it needs. At such a moment, technology is no longer a means by which our mastery of the world is extended, but an affront to our usual self-absorption. Constantly seeking self-affirmation, the narcissist views everything as an extension of his will, and therefore has only a tenuous grasp on the world of objects as something independent. He is prone to magical thinking and delusions of omnipotence. A repairman, on the other hand, puts himself in the service of others, and fixes the things they depend on. His relationship to objects enacts a more solid sort of command, based on real understanding. For this very reason, his work also chastens the easy fantasy of mastery that permeates modern culture. The repairman has to begin each job by getting outside his own head and noticing things; he has to look carefully and listen to the ailing machine.

The repairman is called in when the smooth operation of our world has been disrupted, and at such moments our dependence on things normally taken for granted (for example, a toilet that flushes) is brought to vivid awareness. For this very reason, the repairman’s presence may make the narcissist uncomfortable. The problem isn’t so much that he is dirty, or uncouth. Rather, he seems to pose a challenge to our self-understanding that is somehow fundamental. We’re not as free and independent as we thought.